Wednesday 10.35pm.
It’s a pearl-handled flick knife with a three inch blade. Alex stole it from his brother’s stuff when Johnny went inside. Johnny took it from an old man who pulled it during a burglary. Took it and used it. Alex hasn’t ever used it like that. He’s never had to. He chooses his victims carefully. No one who looks like they might give him any kind of aggro. So when he shows them the knife, they give him what he wants. A simple, straightforward transaction, and nobody gets hurt. You’re a fool if you go looking for trouble, even in his line of work. That’s how you end up inside, like Johnny.
What Alex wants right now is music. He’s broadening his horizons. iPods are a terrific invention. Kids nowadays, they carry their entire record collection round with them – and give it up so easily. It’s a lot less hassle than the old days shoplifting CDs from HMV, racing fat security guards down the escalators and across the precinct. You don’t even have to go out looking. Sit on any street corner long enough, and some kid’ll bring their music right to you. Of course, you’ve got to be canny when you’re choosing a vic. Nobody who looks like they might be into X-Factor or Glee, though you can usually tell that by the way they dress. Too many bright colours in their wardrobe and you can guarantee an earful of Girls Aloud and not much else. Once Alex stole a Touch from some blonde girl in a dayglo top – she must have been 18, that was the shocking thing – and it was wall-to-wall Justin Bieber, the whole 32 gigs, one remix after another. Alex couldn’t even bring himself to sell that one down the Cash Converter, he just dropped it off the flyover instead. Ever since then he’s been careful only to take iPods from people wearing dark clothes. The Emo kids, the metalheads, the skate-punks. Stuff like that, he doesn’t have any problem with. Plus, you’re far more likely to be surprised by their music libraries. For every My Chemical Romance track, there’ll be some Nick Drake or Nina Simone or Gil Scott Heron. Alex likes to be surprised.
Take this girl here, with the thick-framed glasses and the purple streaks in her hair. All in black, apart from the wires leading up to her ears. She looks like the sort who’ll introduce him to all kinds of interesting new tunes. As music theft goes, this is way more exciting than bit-torrenting.
Alex jumps down from the church wall and opens the knife with that cool, casual motion that makes it such a design classic. What sort of backwards country is it where an object this striking and graceful is illegal to carry round in the street?
“I don't want to hurt you,” he tells her. He likes to make that clear up front, especially with women. He’s no wish to be taken for a rapist. He isn’t into that sort of thing at all. Any woman he’s with, she’s there because she wants it. Only desperate losers force it - or sick, twisted losers – and Alex isn’t either. Not that this girl’s really his type. Needs to put on a few pounds and get a decent haircut first.
“Just give me your iPod and I’m on my way,” he says, raising his voice in case she can’t hear him over her music. But he’s in luck: the girl does exactly as he asks, without any quarrel. So he takes the device, wraps the wires round the case, nods a cheeky ‘thank you’ and legs it down the alley towards the park.
Wednesday 8.01pm.
Kelly goes out after Eastenders. This will be the third night, and she’s starting to get impatient. Three of her mates have lost their iPods to this creep in the last month and it’s time for payback. But Kelly’s walking round with a loaded weapon in her pocket and she worries if she doesn’t find him soon, it might go off all by itself.
She goes up Waterloo Street first, towards the chippie where the bloke stole Charlie’s Zen Jukebox. Charlie hates Apple, she says iTunes makes her pc crash and refuses to give Steve Jobs any more money. She’s really bolshie sometimes, Charlie. Maybe that’s why Kelly likes her.
Next she walks across the park where Lara lost her Shuffle. Lara’s not the sort to hang round the park by herself after dark, but she’d had a massive row with Steve that night and went for a cry in the bandstand. Lara’s a bit of a drama queen, but funny with it.
But there’s no one in the park tonight, not even a dog walker, so Kelly crosses the old railway bridge, goes through the Co-op car park, and comes out by the Fun Pub. It was in the bus shelter just down the road where Amanda became his third victim. A brand new 64 gig Classic, she’d got it for her birthday and spent all weekend loading it up with songs. And what, this bastard thinks just ‘cos he’s got a knife, he can take it off her – take anything from anybody? Amanda told her dad who reported it to the police, but they won’t do anything. They can’t even catch all the murderers and rapists who live in this town, why are they going to bother about a few stolen iPods? And even if they did, he’d probably get off with a slap on the wrist. It makes Kelly so angry to even think about it, that’s why she’s taken retribution into her own hands. Now all she has to do is find him.
He’s a clever bugger though. Moves around to avoid getting caught. So much for criminals always returning to the scene of the crime. Kelly’s almost ready to call it a night when she notices this bloke sitting on the wall outside the churchyard. Puffer jacket and beanie hat, just like Charlie and Amanda described him. Lara’s description was a little more colourful. Lara’s kind of the reason Kelly doesn’t swear more herself. No way she’d ever be that good.
“I don't want to hurt you,” he says as he jumps down from the wall, and Kelly has to fight the urge to cheer. At last! Take this, you… fucker!
Wednesday 11.16pm.
There’s no one in when Alex gets back to the squat, and that’s just the way he likes it. He tries the lamp and is pleased to discover the power’s working. They steal electric from the pub next door, but the wiring Lance bodged together to make that happen is pretty hit and miss. Still, you get what you pay for. Alex puts his laptop on to charge (he nicked it from the back of an Audi in the multi-storey a couple of months back) and rolls himself a joint from the stash under the carpet. He cracks open a warm can of Fosters (the fridge is knackered again) and flops back into the sofa with his new toy.
Fitting the phones in his ears, he holds down the ‘on’ button. The screen lights up and he scrolls through the options. He’s disappointed – and a little confused – by what he finds. There’s only one song in the whole library. And he’s never even heard of it, or the artist. Vorvadoss? The Eraser? A whole 59 minutes of this shit? Just his luck, it must be some kind of prog-metal concept album bollocks. That girl didn’t really look the type. Still, he’s not got anything else to listen to tonight. Should at least give it a try. Maybe it’ll blow his mind…
The previous Sunday, 12.18am.
Finally, Kelly finds the download. She’s been online since lunchtime Saturday, so thank god her parents are away for the weekend. There was nothing listed on google, so this has taken her much longer than it should. She first read about Vorvadoss, The Eraser when she was hanging round the demonology chatrooms last summer. She’d been almost-seeing this guy called Russell who she’d met through Facebook and who claimed to be a practising necromancer, though Kelly thought he was full of shit. She’d been reading up on various malefic practises in the hope of not seeming like such a dumb little baby when they met, but he kept cancelling on her and looking back now, she's pretty sure he was either one of her friends messing about or some sad old bastard who thought he was grooming her but couldn’t quite get it up. Either way, she didn’t care, she’d become far more interested in his supposed specialist subject than she’d ever been in him.
Online occultism was the next big thing, and Kelly was glad to be into it while it was still taking off – or before they banned it altogether. There were all kinds of cool spells you could download if you knew where to look. Many came as apps, but as Kelly didn’t have an iPhone yet, she had to stick with the ones that were available as mp3s or, if desperate, wavs. She’d fluked an A on her physics exam through one, got Jenny Villiers thrown off the netball team with another, and made Lily Lucas throw up all over Amanda’s ex with a third, after that two-timing rat Kenny Dwyer came on to Lily in the Sixth Form cafeteria right in front of Amanda. The spell to make Martin Richardson fall head over heels in love with her was a wash-out though, as was the one to give her bigger boobs (hell, any boobs would have been a start). But she’s got high hopes for Vorvadoss, The Eraser. Partly because it’s been so difficult to track down, but mainly because so many people in the chatrooms warned her against it.
She hits download, then connects her iPod to the pc.
Thursday 1.13am.
Lance parks the van round the back in the pub car park then hops over the fence and brays on the kitchen window with his fist. He can see the light from the living room and the back of Alex’s head over the sofa. He needs to unload the gear quickly, before anyone sees him, and he needs Alex’s help because some of it’s pretty heavy. There’s three flatscreen TVs and a home cinema system among the haul they boosted from the lock-up down Castle Street, and though Dave helped with the actual robbery, he had other plans for the rest of the evening. Some bird he’d met down the swimming baths. Dave was always getting off with women down the swimming baths. “You see ‘em in their cossies, you know exactly what you’re letting yourself in for.” This latest was a nurse too, the lucky bastard. Worked shifts, so she’d just be getting home, still in her uniform and all. Lance is jealous, but he’s not about to let Dave see that. Still, when that lazy sod Alex can’t even be arsed getting up off the sofa to help shift the gear, that’s just about the final straw for tonight.
“Oy! Cloth-ears! Wakey wakey!”
Lance barges through the kitchen and kicks the back of the sofa, gives it some really welly, but Alex doesn’t move a muscle. So he goes round the other side to give Alex a good slap round the chops and wake him up but what he sees stops him dead.
“There’s nothing left,” Lance tells the police when he finally pulls it together enough to call 999. He’s not thinking about all the stolen gear they’ll find in the squat or out back in his van. He’s not thinking about the bag of weed still open on the coffee table. He’s not thinking about anything except what he saw on Alex’s face.
“Please… do something… there’s nothing left.”
